My purpose in this chapter has been to intimate, in as concise a manner as possible, some of the terrible consequences that have arisen, logically and inevitably, out of Christian faith. Unfortunately, this catalog of horrors could be elaborated upon indefinitely. Auschwitz, the Cathar heresy, the witch hunts-these phrases signify depths of human depravity and human suffering that would surely elude description were a writer to set himself no other task. As I have cast a very wide net in the present chapter, I can only urge readers who may feel they have just been driven past a roadside accident at full throttle to consult the literature on these subjects. Such extracurricular studies will reveal that the history of Christianity is principally a story of mankind's misery and ignorance rather than of its requited love of God.
While Christianity has few living inquisitors today, Islam has many. In the next chapter we will see that in our opposition to the worldview of Islam, we confront a civilization with an arrested history. It is as though a portal in time has opened, and fourteenth-century hordes are pouring into our world. Unfortunately, they are now armed with twenty-first-century weapons.
The Problem with Islam
While my argument in this book is aimed at faith itself, the differences between faiths are as relevant as they are unmistakable. There is a reason, after all, why we must now confront Muslim, rather than Jain terrorists, in every corner of the world. Jains do not believe anything that is remotely likely to inspire them to commit acts of suicidal violence against unbelievers. By any measure of normativity we might wish to adopt (ethical, practical, epistemological, economic, etc.), there are good beliefs and there are bad ones-and it should now be obvious to everyone that Muslims have more than their fair share of the latter.1
Of course, like every religion, Islam has had its moments. Muslim scholars invented algebra, translated the writings of Plato and Aristotle, and made important contributions to a variety of nascent sciences at a time when European Christians were luxuriating in the most abysmal ignorance. It was only through the Muslim conquest of Spain that classical Greek texts found their way into Latin translation and seeded the Renaissance in western Europe. Thousands of pages could be written cataloging facts of this sort for every religion, but to what end? Would it suggest that religious faith is good, or even benign? It is a truism to say that people of faith have created almost everything of value in our world, because nearly every person who has ever swung a hammer or trimmed a sail has been a devout member of one or another religious culture. There has been simply no one else to do the job. We can also say that every human achievement prior to the twentieth century was accomplished by men and women who were perfectly ignorant of the molecular basis of life. Does this suggest that a nineteenth-century view of biology would have been worth maintaining? There is no telling what our world would now be like had some great kingdom of Reason emerged at the time of the Crusades and pacified the credulous multitudes of Europe and the Middle East. We might have had modern democracy and the Internet by the year 1600. The fact that religious faith has left its mark on every aspect of our civilization is not an argument in its favor, nor can any particular faith be exonerated simply because certain of its adherents made foundational contributions to human culture.
Given the vicissitudes of Muslim history, however, I suspect that the starting point I have chosen for this book-that of a single suicide bomber following the consequences of his religious beliefs-is bound to exasperate many readers, since it ignores most of what commentators on the Middle East have said about the roots of Muslim violence. It ignores the painful history of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. It ignores the collusion of Western powers with corrupt dictatorships. It ignores the endemic poverty and lack of economic opportunity that now plague the Arab world. But I will argue that we can ignore all of these things-or treat them only to place them safely on the shelf-because the world is filled with poor, uneducated, and exploited peoples who do not commit acts of terrorism, indeed who would never commit terrorism of the sort that has become so commonplace among Muslims; and the Muslim world has no shortage of educated and prosperous men and women, suffering little more than their infatuation with Koranic eschatology, who are eager to murder infidels for God's sake.2
We are at war with Islam. It may not serve our immediate foreign policy objectives for our political leaders to openly acknowledge this fact, but it is unambiguously so. It is not merely that we are at war with an otherwise peaceful religion that has been "hijacked" by extremists. We are at war with precisely the vision of life that is prescribed to all Muslims in the Koran, and further elaborated in the literature of the hadith, which recounts the sayings and actions of the Prophet. A future in which Islam and the West do not stand on the brink of mutual annihilation is a future in which most Muslims have learned to ignore most of their canon, just as most Christians have learned to do. Such a transformation is by no means guaranteed to occur, however, given the tenets of Islam.
A Fringe without a Center
Many authors have pointed out that it is problematic to speak of Muslim "fundamentalism" because it suggests that there are large doctrinal differences between fundamentalist Muslims and the mainstream. The truth, however, is that most Muslims appear to be "fundamentalist" in the Western sense of the word-in that even "moderate" approaches to Islam generally consider the Koran to be the literal and inerrant word of the one true God. The difference between fundamentalists and moderates-and certainly the difference between all "extremists" and moderates-is the degree to which they see political and military action to be intrinsic to the practice of their faith. In any case, people who believe that Islam must inform every dimension of human existence, including politics and law, are now generally called not "fundamentalists" or "extremists" but, rather, "Islamists."
The world, from the point of view of Islam, is divided into the "House of Islam" and the "House of War," and this latter designation should indicate how many Muslims believe their differences with those who do not share their faith will be ultimately resolved. While there are undoubtedly some "moderate" Muslims who have decided to overlook the irrescindable militancy of their religion, Islam is undeniably a religion of conquest. The only future devout Muslims can envisage- as Muslims -is one in which all infidels have been converted to Islam, subjugated, or killed. The tenets of Islam simply do not admit of anything but a temporary sharing of power with the "enemies of God."
Like most other religions, Islam has suffered a variety of schisms. Since the seventh century, the Sunni (the majority) have considered the Shia to be heterodox, and the Shia have returned the compliment. Divisions have emerged within each of these sects as well, and even within the ranks of those who are unmistakably Islamist. We need not go into the sectarian algebra in any detail, apart from noting that these schisms have had the salutary effect of dividing the House of Islam against itself. While this mitigates the threat that Islam currently poses to the West, Islam and Western liberalism remain irreconcilable. Moderate Islam- really moderate, really critical of Muslim irrationality-scarcely seems to exist. If it does, it is doing as good a job at hiding as moderate Christianity did in the fourteenth century (and for similar reasons).
The feature of Islam that is most troubling to non-Muslims, and which apologists for Islam do much to obfuscate, is the principle of jihad. Literally, the term can be translated as "struggle" or "striving," but it is generally rendered in English as "holy war," and this is no accident. While Muslims are quick to observe that there is an inner (or "greater") jihad, which involves waging war against one's own sinfulness, no amount of casuistry can disguise the fact that the outer (or "lesser") jihad-war against infidels and apostates-is a central feature of the faith. Armed conflict in "defense of Islam" is a religious obligation for every Muslim man. We are misled if we believe that the phrase "in defense of Islam" suggests that all Muslim fighting must be done in "self-defense." On the contrary, the duty of jihad is an unambiguous call to world conquest. As Bernard Lewis wr
ites, "the presumption is that the duty of jihad will continue, interrupted only by truces, until all the world either adopts the Muslim faith or submits to Muslim rule."3 There is just no denying that Muslims expect victory in this world, as well as in the next. As Malise Ruthven points out, "The Prophet had been his own Caesar.... If imitatio Christi meant renouncing worldly ambition and seeking salvation by deeds of private virtue, imitatio Muhammadi meant sooner or later taking up arms against those forces which seemed to threaten Islam from within or without."4 While the Koran is more than sufficient to establish these themes, the literature of the hadith elaborates:
Jihad is your duty under any ruler, be he godly or wicked.
A single endeavor (of fighting) in Allah's Cause in the forenoon or in the afternoon is better than the world and whatever is in it.
A day and a night fighting on the frontier is better than a month of fasting and prayer.
Nobody who dies and finds good from Allah (in the Hereafter) would wish to come back to this world even if he were given the whole world and whatever is in it, except the martyr who, on seeing the superiority of martyrdom, would like to come back to the world and get killed again (in Allah's Cause).
He who dies without having taken part in a campaign dies in a kind of unbelief.
Paradise is in the shadow of swords.5
Many hadiths of this sort can be found, and Islamists regularly invoke them as a justification for attacks upon infidels and apostates. Those looking for ways to leaven the intrinsic militancy of Islam have observed that there are a few lines in the Koran that seem to speak directly against indiscriminate violence. Those who wage jihad are enjoined not to attack first (Koran 2:190), since "God does not love aggressors." But this injunction restrains no one. Given the long history of conflict between Islam and the West, almost any act of violence against infidels can now be plausibly construed as an action in defense of the faith. Our recent adventures in Iraq provide all the rationale an aspiring martyr needs to wage jihad against "the friends of Satan" for decades to come. Lewis notes that one who would fight for God is also enjoined not to kill women, children, or the aged, unless in self-defense, but a little casuistry on the notion of self-defense allows Muslim militants to elude this stricture as well. The bottom line is that devout Muslims can have no doubt about the reality of paradise or about the efficacy of martyrdom as a means of getting there. Nor can they question the wisdom and reasonableness of killing people for what amount to theological grievances. In Islam, it is the "moderate" who is left to split hairs, because the basic thrust of the doctrine is undeniable: convert, subjugate, or kill unbelievers; kill apostates; and conquer the world.
The imperative of world conquest is an interesting one, given that "imperialism" is one of the chief sins that Muslims attribute to the West:
Imperialism is a particularly important theme in the Middle Eastern and more especially the Islamic case against the West. For them, the word imperialism has a special meaning. This word is, for example, never used by Muslims of the great Muslim empires-the first one founded by the Arabs, the later ones by the Turks, who conquered vast territories and populations and incorporated them in the House of Islam. It was perfectly legitimate for Muslims to conquer and rule Europe and Europeans and thus enable them-but not compel them-to embrace the true faith. It was a crime and a sin for Europeans to conquer and rule Muslims and, still worse, to try to lead them astray. In the Muslim perception, conversion to Islam is a benefit to the convert and a merit in those who convert him. In Islamic law, conversion from Islam is apostasy-a capital offense for both the one who is misled and the one who misleads him. On this question, the law is clear and unequivocal. If a Muslim renounces Islam, even if a new convert reverts to his previous faith, the penalty is death.6
We will return to the subject of apostasy in a moment. We should first note, however, that Lewis' comment about not compelling the conquered to embrace the true faith is misleading in this context. It is true that the Koran provides a handbrake, of sorts, for Muslim "moderates"-"There shall be no compulsion in religion" (Koran 2:256)-but a glance at the rest of the Koran, and at Muslim history, reveals that we should not expect too much from its use. As it stands, this line offers a very slender basis for Muslim tolerance. First, the Muslim conception of tolerance applies only to Jews and Christians-"People of the Book"-while the practices of Buddhists, Hindus, and other idolators are considered so spiritually depraved as to be quite beyond the pale.7 Even People of the Book must keep to themselves and "humbly" tithe (pay the jizya) to their Muslim rulers. Fareed Zakaria observes,8 as many have, that Jews lived for centuries under Muslim rule and had a relatively easy time of it-but this is only compared with the horrors of life under theocratic Christendom. The truth is that life for Jews within the House of Islam has been characterized by ceaseless humiliation and regular pogroms. A state of apartheid has been the norm, in which Jews have been forbidden to bear arms, to give evidence in court, and to ride horses. They have been forced to wear distinctive clothing (the yellow badge originated in Baghdad, not in Nazi Germany) and to avoid certain streets and buildings. They have been obliged, under penalty of violence and even death, to pass Muslims only on their left (impure) side while keeping their eyes lowered. In parts of the Arab world it has been a local custom for Muslim children to throw stones at Jews and spit upon them.9 These and other indignities have been regularly punctuated by organized massacres and pogroms: in Morocco (1728, 1790, 1875, 1884, 1890, 1903, 1912, 1948, 1952, and 1955), in Algeria (1805 and 1934), in Tunisia (1864, 1869, 1932, and 1967), in Persia (1839, 1867, and 1910), in Iraq (1828, 1936, 1937, 1941, 1946, 1948, 1967, and 1969), in Libya (1785, i860, 1897, 1945, 1948, and 1967), in Egypt (1882, 1919, 1921, 1924, 1938-39, 1945, 1948, 1956, and 1967), in Palestine (1929 and 1936), in Syria (1840, 1945, 1947, 1948, 1949, and 1967), in Yemen (1947), etc.10 Life for Christians under Islam has been scarcely more cheerful.
As a matter of doctrine, the Muslim conception of tolerance is one in which non-Muslims have been politically and economically subdued, converted, or put to sword. The fact that the Muslim world has not been united under a single government for most of its history, and may never be again, is immaterial where this aspiration for hegemony is concerned. For each political community within Islam, "it is the task of the Islamic state to bring about obedience to the revealed law."11
Zakaria observes that Muslims living in the West generally appear tolerant of the beliefs of others. Let us accept this characterization for the moment-though it ignores the inconvenient reality that many Western countries now appear to be "hotbeds of Islamic militancy."12 Before we chalk this up to Muslim tolerance, however, we should ask ourselves how Muslim intolerance would reveal itself in the West. What minority, even a radicalized one, isn't generally "tolerant" of the majority for most of its career? Even avowed terrorists and revolutionaries spend most of their days just biding their time. We should not mistake the "tolerance" of political, economic, and numerical weakness for genuine liberalism.
Lewis observes that "for Muslims, no piece of land once added to the realm of Islam can ever be finally renounced."13 We might also add that no mind, once added to the realm, can ever be finally renounced-because, as Lewis also notes, the penalty for apostasy is death. We would do well to linger over this fact for a moment, because it is the black pearl of intolerance that no liberal exegesis will ever fully digest. Within the House of Islam, the penalty for learning too much about the world-so as to call the tenets of the faith into question-is death. If a twenty-first-century Muslim loses his faith, though he may have been a Muslim only for a single hour, the normative response, everywhere under Islam, is to kill him.
While the Koran merely describes the punishments that await the apostate in the next world (Koran 3:86-91), the hadith is emphatic about the justice that must be meted out in this one: "Whoever changes his religion, kill him." No metaphor hides this directive, and it would seem that no process of liberal hermeneutics can brush it aside.
We might be tempted to accord great significance to the fact that the injunction does not appear in the Koran itself, but in practical terms the hadith literature seems to be every bit as constitutive of the Muslim worldview. Given the fact that the hadith is often used as the lens through which to interpret the Koran, many Muslim jurists consider it to be an even greater authority on the practice of Islam.14 It is true that some liberal jurists require that the apostate subsequently speak against Islam before sanctioning his murder, but the penalty itself is generally not considered "extreme." The justice of killing apostates is a matter of mainstream acceptance, if not practice. This explains why there did not appear to be a single reasonable Muslim living on earth when the Ayatollah Khomeini put a bounty on the head of Salman Rushdie. Many Westerners wondered why millions of "moderate" Muslims did not publicly disavow this fatwa. The answer follows directly from the tenets of Islam, according to which not even Cat Stevens, a Western-born folk singer (now Yosuf Islam), could doubt the justice of it.15
As we have seen, Christianity and Judaism can be made to sound the same, intolerant note-but it has been a few centuries since either has done so. It is, however, a current reality under Islam that if you open the wrong door in your free inquiry of the world, the brethren deem that you should die for it. We might well wonder, then, in what sense Muslims believe that there should be "no compulsion in religion."